JERSEY CITY -- The City Council last night approved a 25-year tax break for a proposed 52-story Columbus Drive residential tower that will include a new public school paid for by the developer.
The council's 6-3 vote on the tax abatement came after a lengthy public hearing that saw more than two dozen people sound off on the plan, a large majority of them union workers who said the project would bring needed jobs to city residents. Dozens more union workers sat in the audience with signs urging the council to approve the deal.
"Don't stop building these buildings," said Eddie Torres, a Jersey City man who belongs to a plumbers union. "They're jobs for people without a trade and they're jobs for people with a trade."
Another member of the same union, Mazzeratti Powell, said the union accepted him despite his prison record when other employers would not.
"We need work," Powell said. "Mcdonald's ain't going to cut it. Burger King ain't going to cut it."
The final vote fell along largely predictable lines, with all of Mayor Steve Fulop's council allies - Rolando Lavarro, Joyce Watterman, Daniel Rivera, Frank Gajewski and Candice Osborne - voting in favor, along with Jermaine Robinson, the new Ward F councilman. Fulop critics Rich Boggiano and Michael Yun voted against, as did Chris Gadsden.
The abatement deal also includes $1 million in city-issued bonds that the city says will pay for infrastructure improvements to the property, now a parking lot.
Gadsden, who joined the council in November and abstained from prior tax abatement votes, said he opposed this measure because he is not confident that developers are hiring the number of local and minority workers that abatement deals require.
The city has "made a haphazard attempt to make sure that our residents are employed," Gadsden said.
Yun said he voted no in part because the deal requires the developers, L+M Development Partners and Low-Income Housing Corp., to pay 7 percent of their annual gross revenue in lieu of taxes, compared to the 11 percent charge prior abatements have mandated.
Watterman chided residents who said they support they idea of a new school but oppose the tax break because abatements, unlike traditional property taxes, provide no funding to the public-school district.
"In a perfect world everything would be perfect, but let me tell you something, this is not a perfect world," she said.
Construction on the $364 million project is expected to begin in July. It will include 750 mostly market-rent apartments. Five percent of the units will be set aside as affordable housing.
The 200-student school will house preschool, kindergarten and first grade students, which school officials hope will help ease crowding problems (nearby School 16 is one of the city's most crowded schools). According to Fulop, the cost of building the school could be as high as $25 million. The developer will deed it to the district for $1.
L+M, part owners of the nearby Paulus Hook Towers, have agreed as part of the abatement deal to extend affordability controls for 163 units in that 23-story tower (the units were set to become market-rate in 2020, the city says).
Last night's abatement approval came one day after Fulop said in his state of the city address that his administration would revise and scale back its abatement policy this year.
Ellen Simon, an ex-school board member and a former Fulop supporter who has become sharply critical of the mayor, said in comments to the council last night that she supports this abatement because of the new school. Simon added that the council should start requiring that a portion of tax abatement revenue should go to the school district, an idea she noted Fulop supported when he was running for mayor in 2013.
"Our schools are approaching a fiscal crisis and the abatements have played a role in creating that crisis," Simon said.
Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
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